Seriously, after all the shit Symantec and McAfee put people through in the past for a home antivirus, it makes me glad that the response to MSE has been very warm.

So what do you use on your personal machines? MSE here of course. I used to be a Trend Micro fan, but you can't argue with simple and free. I've spread the word to tons of people about this who would otherwise just not have an antivirus or put up with Avira ads.

I've spread the word to tons of people about this who would otherwise just not have an antivirus or put up with Avira ads.

Given the choice, I'll take Avira's 0.5% miss rate over MSE's 7.7% miss rate, even with the ads. For a few $$, the ads can be fixed. There's no way to fix MSE's miss rate.

I'm happy with Avira, without the ads.

Eh. MSE is free, and good enough, and the interface is better than any other AV program I've seen.

Plus, these days virus protection is less important than *malware* protection. I generally tell people to use MSE for anti-virus duties, and then to purchase Malwarebytes Anti-Malware also. That's the best of both worlds, and that's what I use.

I *almost* think that running Malwarebytes would probably be enough. Who gets viruses anymore? It's adware/malware that nails people these days.

Eh. MSE is free, and good enough, and the interface is better than any other AV program I've seen.

Plus, these days virus protection is less important than *malware* protection. I generally tell people to use MSE for anti-virus duties, and then to purchase Malwarebytes Anti-Malware also. That's the best of both worlds, and that's what I use.

I *almost* think that running Malwarebytes would probably be enough. Who gets viruses anymore? It's adware/malware that nails people these days.

What's the distinction between MSE and malware protection? Isn't the term A/V generally used to describe all forms of malware these days?

MSE + MalwareBytes + SpywareBlaster has been my formula. Along with a good dosis of discernment and a x64 OS it should be very successful.

My daughter just got her first laptop for her birthday (from Dell) and after running decrapifier to nuke some of the preinstalled shit (McFee I'm looking at you!), I installed for her the above mentioned soft along with Chrome (she doesn't like IE), and boy is her laptop fast and responsive. She is happy too, and I know she'll be well protected because I taught her good computing habits since she first day that she sat down in front of a monitor. Today I will install an imaging app and see how well shew remembers how to use it. This coupled with a 64-bit version ought to do the trick.

I've been using MSE essentially since it first became available. Before that, I was using Avast!.

Me too!

Me three!

MSE has been fantastic; unobtrusive, fast-scanning, and, somewhat more subjectively, no malware issues since I switched to it. Used the corporate version, Forefront, at my previous employer, and it was similarly friendly and useful. When it was initially rolled out (replacing an up-to-date Symantec client), we discovered that something like a quarter of our machines had some sort of infection that Symantec had happily been ignoring.

I see it largely as a matter of economic motivations: Symantec/McAfee/whoever are interested in selling you their software, or subscriptions to such. Microsoft, on the other hand, is interested in salvaging and improving Windows' reputation, both for security and performance.

It certainly helps that Microsoft's engineers seem to far better understand how to leverage the OS APIs (and not the "sekrit" ones ) to monitor and scan files without dragging down the performance of the system or leaving a bunch of broken file locks all over the place.

I know that when I tried it on a test system, the scan would start at 0100, and would often still be running when I got up in the morning. Because of this slow scanning, I scrapped it, and moved on.

I've never seen full scan times that bad, so I'm assuming your system must be kind of slow to begin with, but in my experience MSE is indeed super-slow when scanning big archives. Do you happen to have a full MSDN Library installation on your disk? Shouldn't be a deal-breaker for anti-virus software, though, since you rarely do a full scan anyway.

I know that when I tried it on a test system, the scan would start at 0100, and would often still be running when I got up in the morning. Because of this slow scanning, I scrapped it, and moved on.

I've never seen full scan times that bad, so I'm assuming your system must be kind of slow to begin with, but in my experience MSE is indeed super-slow when scanning big archives. Do you happen to have a full MSDN Library installation on your disk? Shouldn't be a deal-breaker for anti-virus software, though, since you rarely do a full scan anyway.

The system is a Core duo with 2GB of memory (needs a memory upgrade). I do a full scan once a week. With that little memory, the performance of MSE on a full scan is poor, and it drags the rest of the system down with it. Avira doesn't have this problem, and it doesn't miss as much.

Hypothetical question: If you were to upgrade to Windows 8, would you go out of your way to disable Windows Defender since in Win8, Defender is MSE rebranded?

I guess I don't understand the question. Why would you want to disable an improved preinstalled MSE?

Sorry, I was referring to TheVelourFog who said he doesn't run an antivirus. I was was asking him if he would disabled the built-in protection for some reason.

Good question.

I'd say probably not unless there was a way to do it easily and it got me something. I probably wouldn't notice MSE if I installed it today, I'm just use to it not being there and since I don't need it, I don't install it.

Hypothetical question: If you were to upgrade to Windows 8, would you go out of your way to disable Windows Defender since in Win8, Defender is MSE rebranded?

I guess I don't understand the question. Why would you want to disable an improved preinstalled MSE?

Sorry, I was referring to TheVelourFog who said he doesn't run an antivirus. I was was asking him if he would disabled the built-in protection for some reason.

Good question.

I'd say probably not unless there was a way to do it easily and it got me something. I probably wouldn't notice MSE if I installed it today, I'm just use to it not being there and since I don't need it, I don't install it.

services.msc > windows defender, right click and disable. Tada!

Amusingly, during an incredibly late ME3 gaming session I was getting horrible lag for one of my missions, checking my network traffic for lag, etc. when suddenly my firewall popped up with a little message that said: Antispyware scan complete!

Then I realized what time it was and went to bed. (all maintenance tasks on my system start at 3AM)

I don't know whether or not it's a ram hog, but I do know that it's a dog, and that it slows down the rest of the system SIGNIFICANTLY. I assume, but have not verified, that the 2GB of memory is a contributing factor.

Yah the MSE problems sound crazy. Not so much the slow scanning speeds, but the system drain. It seemed to be the lightest a/v out there on my system. Only in some odd cases (like a 2 gig exe) do I even notice any slowdown

Who gets viruses anymore? It's adware/malware that nails people these days.

Incorrect. My most recent employ was as a Geek Squad virtual agent and we got customer calls regarding infected systems all the time, and let me tell you, "real" viruses are alive and well. Simple malware is easy to deal with. Stuff like ZeroAccess and things that tend to come on the heels of rootkits using TDSS file system? Not so much.

Accs wrote:

A program should NEVER intentionally lie to a user. That's what salesmen are for

Except I don't know a single AV program that doesn't intentionally lie now. I'm not interested in getting into the political/oral debate of things, but most any AV program will falsely label most keygens and such as some kind of generic this or that malware, even if it's flat out bullshit. I really dislike that AV companies have decided to be the morality police as well.

For users who have no restraint, for whom MSE is insufficient, I have had great results with Kaspersky. I also keep their rescue CD handy.

Kaspesky pulls its own lip over its head and swallows too much. Seriously, the fact that it will fail to update if the users date/time is incorrect, is retarded. not to mention all the times I've had to unfuck it from failing to properly recognize the registration and activation info, the program clearly shows that the registration is good until some later date, yet says it's invalid, etc. Seriously, the sheer number of completely retarded ways in which Kaspersky blew itself was amazing.

Now don't get me wrong, when it works, it works great. But it breaks down for stupid assed reasons far too much.

Who gets viruses anymore? It's adware/malware that nails people these days.

Ever hear of a BotNet? What do you think creates them?

Red_Chaos1 wrote:

Accs wrote:

A program should NEVER intentionally lie to a user. That's what salesmen are for

Except I don't know a single AV program that doesn't intentionally lie now. I'm not interested in getting into the political/oral debate of things, but most any AV program will falsely label most keygens and such as some kind of generic this or that malware, even if it's flat out bullshit. I really dislike that AV companies have decided to be the morality police as well.

If they choose to label it as a keygen, then it's probably reasonable. If it's just got a generic "bad stuff - we advise you to delete" label, then it's either a false positive, or it's intentional on the part of the A/V company, and NOT good (bug report time).

On the other hand, there are relatively few systems where a key generator (meaning a software license key generator) is a valid task, and was intentionally placed there by the user. In most instances, a keygen is on a system because malware put it there.

On the other hand, there are relatively few systems where a key generator (meaning a software license key generator) is a valid task, and was intentionally placed there by the user. In most instances, a keygen is on a system because malware put it there.

What? Ever heard of reverse engineering and pirating stuff? I am pretty sure that 99.99% of keygens found on systems were downloaded by the user with the specific intention of registering an application by using the keygen. I dunno if you posted in jest or if you're too naive.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason that a piece of malware would include a keygen -- in the unlikely case they were trying to use some licensed software, they'd just crack it before distribution.

OTOH, I'm sure some keygens from shady parts of the 'net (as opposed to the other kind ) have carried malware payloads, but that shouldn't make all keygens suspect as a general class.

Contrary to other people's experiences, I have yet to see an antivirus program that doesn't cause slowdowns, even on newer hardware. Regarding MSE, check out the CPU usage of MsMpEng.exe when doing something as simple as loading a web page on a lower powered system (Atom, Zacate, Intel CULV). It's terrible. It will also occasionally use 100% of a core for extended periods of time for no apparent reason, causing single core systems to become nearly unusable. I've seen better behavior from newer versions of Norton, which used to be the poster child for resource squandering.

I run Secunia PSI to ensure that my software is patched against known vulnerabilities. I also use a sandboxed browser (Chrome). Between those steps and only downloading things from trusted sources, I have not been infected in years. Ironically, the one time I was infected (on XP, by stupidly downloading and running a keygen, a long time ago), the computer had an up-to-date version of Avast, which didn't catch the infection and failed to stop it from seriously damaging my OS. This is pretty common - the average shelf life of malware these days is miniscule, and by the time antimalware will detect it, it's usually too late to prevent an infection. I very much doubt that antimalware would help me even if I did get hit by something exploiting a zero-day vulnerability.

For other people that I can't trust to make smart decisions and keep everything up-to-date, I do install MSE (despite its resource consumption issues, I think it's still the best of the free options) and suggest that they run a MBAM scan every once in a while. I think that these people are more likely to benefit from a download reputation system like what IE9 does more than either of those things, though. Most malware infections that I see these days result from people being duped into downloading things that they shouldn't.

So I ask you as well Baruch, if you were to upgrade to Windows 8, would you go out of your way to disable Windows Defender since in Win8, Defender is MSE rebranded? My experience simply doesn't jive with yours on any system, even netbooks or the machine from 2001 I gave my uncle.